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March 2006

Markus Zusak's compelling appointment with Death

In the hands of Australian writer Markus Zusak, Death is a surprisingly enjoyable omniscient narrator. Sure, Death does his job, and unapologetically so: "I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. . . . Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me."In Zusak's latest young adult novel, The Book Thief, Death doesn't...

Out of Tuscany

Life in the hills of Italy seems so fulfilling for Frances Mayes, one might wonder why she would ever leave, even if, as she says, she can no longer sit quietly reading at the local trattorias and cafes. It was an ongoing search for places that feel as comfortable as her adopted Tuscan hometown of Cortona that inspired the grand tour at the...

Graphic combination

Jodi Picoult will go to the ends of the earth to confront her readers with unsettling truths they'd rather not face. Case in point: while researching The Tenth Circle, her 13th and most adventurous novel yet, the intrepid author huddled inside an Eskimo hut in the dead of winter with a frozen moose thawing on the sideboard to glean the ancient...

Healing faith

On most mornings when she is not teaching or "church hopping," Elizabeth Strout is at the kitchen table writing by hand. "I try to get in three or four hours, and I put off having lunch for as long as I can because having lunch seems to change the energy flow," Strout says during a phone call to the Park Slope, Brooklyn,...

Cooking Column by Sybil Pratt

When Parisians eat out they don't always choose a Michelin-starred restaurant; they often prefer a less formal establishment chosen from the renowned subset of bistros, brasseries and wine bars. If you want to sample the joys of these traditional French eateries without leaving home, join Daniel Young, an accomplished expert on gastronomy, French and otherwise, as he tours his favorites in The...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

Tokyo police detective Chikako Ishizu, protagonist of Miyuki Miyabe's best-selling Shadow Family, returns for an encore performance in Crossfire, this time forced to re-evaluate her skeptical position on paranormal behavior. It seems that Junko Aoki, a pretty young Japanese woman, has a strange talent: she can start fires simply by exerting intense concentration. It is a gift she uses to exact...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

When I reviewed Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza's A Window in Copacabana in January 2005, I wrote (some might say gushed ) that the book was tropical noir at its best, lush with exotic background and sophisticated in dialogue and plot. Now, Garcia-Roza is back with another tale featuring the likable and literate Chief Inspector Espinosa, Pursuit. If given free rein, Espinosa would much prefer to own...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

<b>Who's got the will?</b> I had not read any of Rebecca Pawel's earlier work, so I approached her latest, <b>The Summer Snow</b>, with no preconceived notions except one: that the book was set in present-day Spain. Then a dozen pages or so into the book, mention was made of a recent historical event, one that I clearly recalled having learned about in my 10th-grade...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

Kudos to Swedish author Hakan Nesser for winning the Tip of the Ice Pick Award this month (and likely for the year, should we do a yearly award). Nesser's name looked familiar to me when I first saw the advance reader's copy of Borkmann's Point, but I couldn't quite remember why. After a bit of cogitation, I remembered that a German friend, a fellow mystery aficionado, had mentioned liking...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for fiction, Vollmann's 12th novel showcases his talents as a prose stylist as well as his remarkable ability to blend fact with fiction in unexpected ways. The book is set during World War II, and Vollmann's focus is the tension between Russia and Germany. Through a group of interconnected narratives featuring a host of historical figures composer Dmitri...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

With her new novel, Kennedy one of Britain's most popular literary authors offers an emotionally charged narrative about a young woman and her battle with alcoholism. Hannah Luckraft is 30 years old and trapped in an unbelievably tedious job: selling cardboard boxes. Her only relief is alcohol, and when she's not at work, her days take their shape from her drinking. Her brother, once a close...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

<b>The Geographer's Library</b> Fasman's debut novel has all the makings of a classic literary thriller. The geographer in question is Al-Idrisi, a philosopher and scholar of Spanish-Muslim descent whose specialty was maps, and who attended the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1154. Al-Idrisi once owned a valuable collection of devices that he used in the practice of alchemy,...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Jonathan Harr, prize-winning author of A Civil Action, takes on a very different subject in The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravaggio Masterpiece, read by Campbell Scott. It sounds like a complex thriller, where detective work by young art historians in the dusty archives of a decaying palazzo leads to nail-biting, exciting chases (albeit, only paper chases) and where the intriguing...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Ross King, whose books on Renaissance art and artists were surprise bestsellers, now jumps a few centuries to the Paris of the 1860s where Impressionism was about to burst onto the scene, revolutionizing art as only the Renaissance had before. Written with his unique delight in detail, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism, narrated by Tristan...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Everyone seems to be grumpy or worse in Predator, Patricia Cornwell's 14th foray into forensics, with subplots galore, admirably read by Kate Reading. Kay Scarpetta, now with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, her brilliant niece Lucy's superb state-of-the-art training and research center, can't get her old sleuthing pal Pete Marino to behave; can't get Lucy, sullen and a bit off her...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Ever wonder what it was really like for Penelope, Odysseus's ever-faithful wife, to keep it all going for 20 years while wily Odysseus was having great adventures, sailing around, sleeping with gorgeous goddesses, outwitting villains and seeing the sights? It can't have been easy to raise a son, run the kingdom of Ithaca and evade the pack of sleazy suitors who tried to eat her out of...

Romance Column by Sandy Huseby

The high-stakes world of horse racing is the backdrop for danger to heart and body in Stephanie Laurens' latest Cynster series novel, What Price Love. Lady Priscilla Dalloway follows her twin brother, Rus, because she believes his new job with Lord Comarty's stables may have placed him in mortal danger. Once in England, the fiery Irishwoman butts heads with Dillon Caxton. Caxton is newly...

Romance Column by Sandy Huseby

Joanna, wife of Chuza, chief steward to King Herod, learns that the heart grows powerful when it accepts the truth of what it seeks in L.A. Times reporter Mary Rourke's first novel, Two Women of Galilee. Told vividly and with deceptively simple language, the story opens the door to the Biblical world through the circumstances and choices Joanna faces. Tuberculocis drives Joanna to seek out her...

Romance Column by Sandy Huseby

Juggling the ticklish challenges of ending relationships for others while starting a new relationship, Danielle Dani Myers takes on life with zest and cheeky charm in Johanna Edwards' chick lit frolic, Your Big Break. Breakup Hell has five stages nervous breakdown, sour grapes, rebounding, backsliding and letting go and Dani has reason to know those stages well. She was the victim of a slam...

Romance Column by Sandy Huseby

Willie Nelson warbled about them, this reviewer has always held a soft spot for them, and now three authors combine to shout out the undying fascination with them in My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. In Lorraine Heath's The Reluctant Hero, dime novelist Andrea Jackson needs new inspiration to overcome her writer's block. She sets her sights on Texas sheriff Matthew Knight, convinced his...

Cooking Column by Sybil Pratt

Katy Sparks is one of those wonderfully imaginative cookbook authors whose enthusiasm virtually vibrates from the page. Katy has cooked for spectacular restaurants and truly knows how to dazzle dazzle-seeking customers. But in her first cookbook, Sparks in the Kitchen, Katy's goal is to share the immense pleasure she takes in cooking at home. She knows that many cookbooks made up of restaurant...

Cooking Column by Sybil Pratt

Carol Gordon, a successful innkeeper on Cape Cod, quickly learned that to survive, she'd need a batch of timesaving recipes; it's no fun getting up at 4:30 a.m. to start baking the morning muffins. So, she began to collect ideas from other small inns, B&andampB's, and family and friends for dishes that can be prepared the night before. The result is Sleep On It, 150 recipes that delectably...

Well Read Column by Robert Weibezahl

During the same week that I was reading Adam Thorpe's accomplished new novel, The Rules of Perspective, an arbitration panel ruled that the Austrian government must return five paintings, valued at $150 million, to the heirs of the Jewish owner from whom the Nazis seized them in the 1938. The serendipitous timing of this morally important legal decision underscores one of the central conceits...